Monthly Archives: March 2018

REES GETS HIS WAFFLE IN A TWIST

The Reverend Rees’s latest HORRIFYING ASSAULT by management jargon on the English language has just crossed our desk. Is he having a baby?

The Reverend has decided, in his wisdom, that he needs to recruit a committee to recruit a committee to run his absurd 50 year ‘ONE CITY PLAN’ and so he’s sent out a letter to the great ‘n’ good and any self-styled city leadership wanker inviting interest in this exciting non-job.

“The City Office is now setting up a Governing Board and is seeking Board members to oversee the IMPLANTATION of the initiative,” he waffles. Er, did he by any chance mean, “The City Office is now setting up a Governing Board and are seeking Board members to IMPLEMENT the initiative”?

Because last time we looked “implantation” is the stage of pregnancy at which the fertilized egg adheres to the wall of the uterus!

MAT SHIT CRAZY

Just days after a string of national press reports in January highlighting the CHRONIC FINANCIAL PROBLEMS of Multi-Academy Trusts across the country, parents of Hillcrest Primary in Totterdown were informed that the school had quietly approached the Regional Schools Commissioner to form a MULTI ACADEMY TRUST (MAT) with Holymead, West Town Lane & Whitchurch Primaries.

Accompanying the announcement, a set of dubious claims were LEAKED out to parents to justify the idiot plan. Claims that include ludicrous financial assertions for MATs with little basis in reality. One claim is that academies get “MORE MONEY” than local authority schools. They do not. Funding per pupil is the SAME for both types of school.

Another claim is that the academies will “SAVE MONEY” because the school will not have to pay any money to the local authority for shared services. Partially true. Although the school will have to pay money to the MAT instead. Savings, therefore, will be somewhere between very limited, zero or more than they’re paying now depending on how the MAT and its OPAQUE and UNACCOUNTABLE trustees, members and self-styled leaders choose to set their charges (and significant personal salaries).

The only possible way academies can spend more money on your children is if they DRASTICALLY REDUCE teachers’ and staff pay and conditions – any schools’ biggest expense. This means an assault on maternity, paternity and sick pay, more use of unqualified and newly qualified teachers, less staff with larger classes, poorer SEN provision and much more. Otherwise, these academies are BARELY SOLVENT.

A glance at the accounts for West Town Lane, which is already an academy, reveals the school has just £200k in reserves and a capital buildings budget of just £25k per year. £200k is enough to pay staff for ONE MONTH. While the school is just a new roof away from BANKRUPTCY.

These schools simply aren’t financially sustainable outside local authority control. A fact confirmed by the Times Educational Supplement. They reported this month that “it would only take TWO MORE YEARS like the one that they have just had to leave the entire [MAT] sector on the verge of insolvency.”

Why are local schools rushing down this academy route then? Or more to the point, why isn’t our Labour-run authority doing more to warn NAÏVE SCHOOL GOVERNING BODIES of the dangers of this DAFT TORY INITIATIVE? And what, exactly, is the Reverend’s cabinet member for schools, Anna “The Ostrich” Keen, whose main qualification for the job appears to be that she’s the Reverend’s old geography teacher’s daughter, doing about it?

The Ostrich needs to get on top of this issue. Otherwise people might end up thinking that the Reverend and The Ostrich are launching a vicious Tory-style AUSTERITY ASSAULT on teachers’ pay and conditions in Bristol using school governing bodies as cover to deflect the blame away from themselves.

Not the kind of dishonesty the Reverend Rees’s would ever get up to, surely?

UPDATE: Since going to press, EIGHT more schools in Bristol have announced their intention to form a MAT:

Fair Furlong Primary in Withywood
Knowle Park Primary in Knowle Park
Bridge Farm Primary in Whitchurch
Whitehall Primary
Cabot Primary in St Pauls
Glenfrome Primary School in Eastville
Brunel Field Primary in Ashley Down
Ashley Down Primary

CLASS WAR MEMORIAL CAMPSITE SHOCKER!

A report in the Nazi Post on 29 January announced that the homeless have been FORCED to pitch tents on Rosemary Green, just by Greenbank Cemetery. Not only was this an EYESORE for the hordes of wealthy hipsters in the area but, screamed the Post in an attempt to dial-up further controversy, the homeless had set their tents up next to a ‘WAR MEMORIAL’.

How disrespectful, setting up tents by a memorial for our fallen heroes in wars. However, some basic RESEARCH revealed this ‘war memorial’ was actually a memorial to 4,000+ paupers who DIED in the now demolished Eastville workhouse. All died of POVERTY and NEGLECT in the workhouse and were dumped in UNMARKED GRAVES.

A few years ago, local historians wrote a book detailing the CRIMES of this workhouse and then raised funds for a MEMORIAL to these people who had been FORGOTTEN. So historians and locals were scratching their collective heads at references to a “war memorial” in Greenbank Cemetery. Concluding that it was either more CRAP JOURNALISM or, maybe, the Nazi Post is recognising a “CLASS WAR MEMORIAL“? Whatever the case, all references to a “war memorial” have now been disappeared from the newspaper. Funny that.

Busy spouting the usual blather from Mr Angry, the Nazi Post missed THE REAL STORY here. This memorial to the workhouse was about people who DIED due to a system that CRIMINALISED POVERTY. People who could not work – like the old, infirm, those with learning difficulties or, even, those who suffered industrial accidents – were dumped in workhouses. Families were split up and the able-bodied poor were set to work undertaking MINDLESS TASKS.

Food was cheap and INADEQUATE and the regime BRUTAL. The theory of our Victorian CITY LEADERS was that if people were treated harshly, they would stop being poor. No, we’re not taking the piss, that’s the size of it.

Before burying those that died from CHRONIC neglect and starvation, the Church of England came down and consecrated ground on Rosemary green for the burial of the workhouse dead. Not once but three times at £50 a pop. Enough money to feed all of the incarcerates well for a year. But at least their bodies were safe … Er, not bleeding likely.

Most were DUG UP by a JCB in 1972, taken to Avon View cemetery and DUMPED in a hole without any marking. Historians are still trying to get the CofE to pay for a headstone at Avon View but getting the BISHOP OF BRISTOL to give a shit about anyone that’s not a wealthy creep or a Merchant Venturer is like getting blood out of a stone.

Today, with austerity cuts, ‘CITY LEADERS’ won’t be building any workhouses, feeding the poor gruel or dumping their bodies in MASS UNMARKED GRAVES with the CofE’s support. Instead, the homeless and destitute are left to crawl off to a tent or a shop doorway and FUCKING DIE. As long as the shoppers or commuters don’t have to look at them, there’s not a problem.

But you better look at them, because YOU COULD BE NEXT. A workplace accident, divorce or a death in the family could see you reduced to LIVING IN A TENT in Bristol – as long as the council don’t nick it off you, of course. That’s the reality of Bristol today. The benefits system is INADEQUATE and support services are COLLAPSING due to a lack funds. The inhumanity must stop. Surely the media and everyone else need to stop demonising the homeless and poor and have a pop at those who put them there, innit?

We don’t want historians writing books about the cruelty of today’s city leaders while people build memorials to our dead homeless in a hundred years do we?

PRIVATE SECTOR EFFICIENCY WATCH

Spunkface

City Council Property Services Director, Robert “Spunkface” Orrett, finally abandoned his local authority sinking ship in September for an executive lifeboat in Filton. Here, a LUCRATIVE CONTRACT appeared with Malaysian corporate, YTL.

YTL are the firm who want to build Bristol’s arena in Filton with public money and who, no doubt, will find Spunkface’s city council CONTACT BOOK and INSIDER KNOWLEDGE of developing an arena in Bristol very useful indeed.

Those with longer memories, may recall Spunkface arrived at Bristol City Council in the autumn of 2012 from corporate property firm BNP Paribas as the man who was going to bring “private sector efficiency and discipline” to the council’s STRUGGLING and UNDER-POWERED Property Services Department.

He also brought along an UNLAWFUL private consultancy gig with BNP Paribas, which he didn’t give up for over a year, breaking all known codes of conduct for public servants. However, for some reason, this conduct was OVERLOOKED by senior council bosses and councillors who are supposed to rigorously defend the integrity of our public services.

When Spunkface departed in the autumn, his department – largely run by a revolving door of interims and consultants who couldn’t give a toss – was announcing over £7million in UNACHIEVED SAVINGS; an OVERSPEND of £2million and was engulfed in MANAGEMENT CHAOS. Meanwhile, on Spunkface’s watch, a number of financial and bullying SCANDALS had emerged across his department.

These SCANDALS in markets, security services and the Harbour Office were all brushed under the carpet by Spunkface while he SINGULARLY FAILED to make any progress in increasing income from the council’s valuable property portfolio as he had been employed to do. Although plenty of city council property was handed over FOR FREE to corporate property guardian firms to earn big money from EXPLOITING the homeless and vulnerably housed.

Now that Spunkface has departed, we learn that discussions are taking place at a senior level in the council about OUTSOURCING the management of the council’s Property Services to the PRIVATE SECTOR to bring – wait for it – “private sector efficiency and discipline” to the useless department!

Who would ever have guessed that a manager brought in from the private sector would achieve nothing except to so thoroughly trash a local authority department it needed to be outsourced to the, er, private sector?

PATH TO RUIN

SHIT IDEAS FROM REES’S CORPORATE FRIENDS pt 56

Within weeks of the Reverend Rees unveiling his PIE-IN-THE SKY underground rail plan, the BRISTOL AND BATH RAILWAY PATH is, again, being targeted as a CHEAP rapid transit option by Labour’s corporate transport consultant friends.

In an EXACT REPETITION of proposals that were ended 10 years ago by HUGE public protest, some shadowy corporate transport consultants have LEAKED a proposal to the Nazi Post to run a tram/light rail down the Railway Path as a cut-price alternative to Rees’s impossibly expensive tube dream.

The Reverend’s transport wonks have even wheeled out USEFUL IDIOT, David Redgewell, a self-appointed local transport spokesman to back their plan. Redgewell operates under the guise of the official-sounding ‘South West Transport Network’, a mystery organisation with mystery funding and no formal documents of association.

“No one is saying the cycle way will be closed, far from it, it would actually be widened and improved to allow the light rail track to run alongside it,” explains this full time UNACCOUNTABLE BUSYBODY who doesn’t even understand that the Railway Path isn’t a “cycle way” but a park and inner city wildlife corridor first and foremost.

“There is already a section of the cycle path that runs alongside the Midland railway, so it isn’t too radical,” he rambles on. Well, tell that to the THOUSANDS of residents that successfully campaigned against exactly the same stupid plan ten years ago, you dodgy transport industry gobshite.

Meanwhile the Reverend’s entirely decorative transport cabinet member, Mhairi “Bauble” Threlfall, currently overseeing the incredible £200million non-appearing Metrobus system, has tried to brush aside any plans for the Railway Path. She told the Post, a rapid transit route on the path had been “MENTIONED IN PASSING”, whatever that means.

The Post however suggests things may have gone beyond being “mentioned’. They say, “several of the UK’s top transport experts – including those involved in London Cross Rail project and the completed Strathclyde Subway – have been IN TALKS with Metro Mayor Tim Bowles, Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees and leader of B&NES council Tim Warren.”

And, “It is understood the group has been advised there are only TWO OPTIONS available to running the eastern route through one of the most congested parts of the city – either building a tunnel underground from the outskirts or build a tram-like light rail system next to THE CYCLE PATH.”

Does the Reverend know what happened last time the local Labour Party tried to TRASH our Railway Path in 2008? They were STOPPED in their tracks by MASS PROTEST before slumping to their WORST election performance in a generation in 2009 when they ended up with just 16 councillors.

The Greens and the Lib Dems who SUPPORTED the Railway Path and OPPOSED Labour’s rapid transit plan, meanwhile, enjoyed an electoral boost with the Lib Dems forming a majority administration in 2009.

Rees and Threlfall should consider themselves warned.

IMPORTANT RECENT LEGAL DECISION RE: DEREGULATED ASSURED SHORTHOLD TENANCIES AND SECTION 21 EVICTIONS

A recent landlord-served Section 21 notice vs assured shorthold tenant contest was fought at county court level (London) over the landlord’s failure to issue a gas safety certificate at the outset of the tenancy. The landlord lost his case, then appealed it and lost again. The appeal judgement sets quite an extraordinary precedent for future cases of contesting a Section 21 eviction over the same grounds. Follow this link to:

https://nearlylegal.co.uk/2018/02/i-can-serve-gas-safety-certificates/

Both judges ruled in agreement that the changes made to the Deregulation Act in 2015 made it mandatory for the landlord to have ALREADY issued the tenant in a gas using property with a gas safety certificate WHEN S/HE SIGNED THE FIRST CONTRACT OF THE TENANCY.

Also, they ruled that another/new safety certificate CANNOT be served to rectify this omission in retrospect. Therefore, if the landlord/agent failed in this regard at the outset of the tenancy, then if the landlord serves a Section 21 notice to quit and the tenant contests it, the latter has a very strong case to argue in court that the notice is illegal and invalid.

There are various comments at the bottom of the article linked above which clarify some of the legal issues around the decision.

On October 1 2018, assuming it is not overturned at the High Court, and as written in the Deregulation Act’s amendment of 2015, the ruling will apply not only to deregulated private tenancies but also to regulated ones.

Hence housing activists need to GET MOBILISING around defending these ground-breaking judgements from any sneaky moves by the Tories and the NLA ASAP.

ST-MARVIN’S-UP-THE-CREEK PARISH NEWS #13

Lucky parishioners personally invited to the premiere of my thrilling biopic film, ‘The Reverend’s Ace: a shameless hagiography’, please note that the venue has been switched from the Church Hall due to a small completion delay in its transformation process. The film, by my German friend Ms Helga Goebbels, is an enthralling documentary about my incredible journey and features fascinating interviews with friends and family as well as focussing on my lovely new garden furniture from B&Q. See you there!

More good news, this time regarding the delayed pay-as-you-go self-service tea vending solution in the vestry. The original contract with our self-service tea vending solution partner, Agresso Refreshment World, has been formally off-tabled at a commercially confidential but highly competitive settlement rate. Now, the parish’s Interim Head of Agile, Ms Beardmore from Shropshire will initiate a smart procurement process to locate a new best value self-service tea vending solution partner.

Ms Beardmore wants an integrated solution in place by as soon as next January so that we can make efficiencies in tea delivery as soon as 2021. That is a small slippage of just four years in the delivery of this complex refreshments transformation project. Ms Beardmore also assures me that a step change in biscuit provision may be walked down the decision pathway going forward.

I have now tasked Ms Beardmore with investigating further efficiencies that prioritise elasticity in our budget envelope as it is further stretched by the Diocese’s austerity plans. One proposal is to reimagine the underused parish library, where weird old religious books gather dust, as a drive-thru communion facility for an increasing number of parishioners with less time for traditional worship but with salaries that might be better reflected in the collection plate. Ms Beardmore, with her superb customer services background, also proposes installing a 24-hour self-serve telephone communion service facility with a fully integrated credit card payment option.

Both initiatives are ideal for parents seeking an easy-pay, time efficient journey for their child into the parish’s OFSTED rated ‘excellent’ St Snoot’s Academy. We have already procured a team of digital enablement consultants from London to work up a joined-up feasibility working paper and we will embark on an innovative consultation exercise to review this exciting transformation plan soon. I shall update on this agile worship programme as it progresses.

On budget, on time and on target, the church toilets are now permanently closed. Those needing toilet facilities should try the High Street where we are inviting businesses to express an interest in providing free toilet facilities for St Marvin’s worshippers

Finally, please note that places remain available on my flagship leadership programme exclusively for dull middle managers and accountants with no personality. Spaces are limited, so get in touch quickly if you wish to join the likes of Ms Beardmore and myself as inspirational parish leaders. As my mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon always tells me, “promote the dull, stupid and insipid for they will always do as they’re told.”

Farewell and adieu.

The Vicar

Social Cleansing at Bristol City FC

Loyal supporters were left feeling shocked and betrayed after Bristol City announced season ticket prices for next year. Like a mirror image of Tory Britain, the most vulnerable fans, including the young and disabled, are the hardest hit, with a sickening price increase of 570% on last season.

In addition, adult tickets have risen 16%, senior citizens 17%, under-22’s 25%, and under-19’s 51%. This seems particularly hateful in light of this season’s huge financial gains from TV revenue, cup ties and a record 16,000 season tickets sold. In a further piss take of it’s most loyal fans, BCFC have given fans just 2 weeks to pay up – or they will permanently lose their seats. This is over 5 months before the new season even begins.

Many believe BCFC are attempting to ‘nudge’ parents with children into the ‘Family Area’ – way up in the gods of the Lansdown upper tier, thereby freeing up lucrative seats in the areas that provide the best views. If City win promotion to the Premier League, the club can sell those seats at a premium to corporate groups and football tourists.

The neighbourhoods of Ashton and Southville are two of the worst affected areas in terms of gentrification in the whole of Bristol. No doubt the club see this as an opportunity to entice a new breed of fan; wealthier and more middle-class, politically right-on, less prone to profanity and happy to sit down and shut up in a sanitised and sterile environment.

One fan told us: “I have sat in the same place for 42 years with three generations of my family. For us to sit in the same seats next season, we have to pay an extra £991. The club are effectively saying: move where we tell you or get an economic sanction. Now that they’re on the verge of joining the Premier League, it’s as if they don’t need us anymore. We are not wanted. How can they justify such a steep increase above inflation? This is our reward for the support we’ve given over the years? It feels like the club have put a tax on loyalty”.

City’s owner Steve Lansdown (non dom financial services shyster) – and his witless son Jon (who just happens to be Vice-Chairman) justified the prices by saying: “The club want to get more families sitting together and feel that is best in the family area”.

The board have made the cost of renewing so prohibitive for most, their message is clear: we don’t want you to pay more for your current seat – we want you gone from those sections altogether.

UNISON: THE SORRY STATE by The Dwarf

Despite being the union that campaigned for an end to tribunal fees and won. Despite being the union that strikes for hospital workers, wins equal pay claims for cleaners and tries to prevent the outsourcing of care workers everywhere except Bristol. Despite having nearly all the cuts in this round of austerity aimed at those areas only they really have members in – Bristol Unison still refuse to do anything to oppose the cuts. That is, unless Mayor Marvin asks them to go on a demonstration against his own cuts. In which case out comes the banner in what could only be described as a giant blow struck for irony.

The cuts are coming in social services, children’s services, libraries and community services. All areas that are almost exclusively Unison and all are areas where member engagement, information exchange and political activism are non-existent. Meetings with unions have been cancelled, barrack room lawyers silenced in staff meetings, management have denied a plan to outsource libraries but then put out an email about mutualisation.

Does anyone remember the battles of the past? When disabled residents and unions lobbied noisily on the ramps of the Counts Louse? Where day centres were occupied and workers broke the blockade passing them fish and chips through the windows? Where library workers struck for the right to a family life? Where have the activists gone? I’m reliably informed that Unison hasn’t enough activists to fill a Renault Espace when they once numbered in the hundreds. They’re voting with their feet comrades … Wake up and get a grip.

I was told that regional officers consider the cuts to have been democratically arrived at and that is that, nothing more can be done. We at The BRISTOLIAN reject that sort of democracy. We want an engaged, participatory democracy of mutual solidarity and so should the unions. If we don’t get it then protest and actions must rightfully take place.

But here we come to the nub of the matter and that is the risk social and industrial agitation poses to the electoral prospects of the Labour Party. Occupying day centres and striking for work-life balance is OK as long as the Liberal Democrats or an Independent is in charge but not when it’s Labour.

Last year there was a scandal at Unison’s AGM as to whether Unison should affiliate to the anti-cuts groups – a no-brainer in anyone’s world assolidarity with people against the cuts should be ingrained. A self-appointed standing orders committee, which no one knew existed because it didn’t, ruled the motion incompetent. This year, the union’s members ruled their own representatives’ incompetent over a scandalous redundancy pay cut ballot stitch-up. And this was in front of a firebrand assistant general secretary, from head office, who was so embarrassed he didn’t know where to look.

Sorry, Roger McKenzie, that you had to see the union in such a sorry state.

SCARY MONSTERS #4: The Wrecker

It came to pass that a creature of such wickedness that its only joy was in domination came into being. The Wrecker.

Having plundered the cultures of the enlightened, it created an anti-culture of secrecy and wickedness. The Wrecker was full of lust greed and avarice. Scorning spirituality, the vile creature became obsessed with material things. Its violence knew no bounds as it roamed the Earth destroying beauty and harmony.

The just people fought to survive as the Wrecker attacked their homes, families, language and culture. Whole populations were used as assets to fuel the system of greed and immorality as the Wrecker became increasingly frightened about the inevitable collapse of his cancerous ideology.

After The Wrecker had engaged in one of its most hysterical bouts of self-harm, he decided that some of his victims who he had previously forced to a foreign land would be useful elsewhere.

In the second part of the twentieth century, people from the Caribbean were encouraged to come to Great Britain to work. Many of these workers came to live in St Pauls, Bristol.

Typically, of their positive attitude, they promoted an understanding of their culture which was appreciated by the local people and fellow overseas workers. The most well known feature of this is the St Pauls Carnival. The wrecker became enraged by people working on a building of love in complete opposition to his philosophy of selfish self-obsession.

It has long been Bristol City Council policy not to house people of Afro-Caribbean origin in St Pauls and the council took over the long running and self-sufficient carnival. They have cancelled the carnival because they cannot afford to run something that’s already up and running. They now need the area and once again the needs of the victims of the wrecker are ignored.

Please help resist the Wrecker! A monster is most dangerous when it is in its death throes